


The Radius in Curtain Seven

by HugeAlienPie



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kid Fic, M/M, Nurse Danny, Parent Stiles, Pre-Relationship, vaguely canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 10:46:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7681375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HugeAlienPie/pseuds/HugeAlienPie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny tries to live without regrets. He grabs new experiences, makes confident decisions, and views mistakes as opportunities for growth. He can't change the past, so he sees little point in agonizing over what-ifs. If he had a list of things he would do differently, it would only contain three things:</p><p>1. He would've gotten involved in the Beacon Hills supernatural scene after Derek turned Jackson.<br/>2. He would've said "Yes" the first time Stiles Stilinski asked if he was attractive to gay guys and asked him on what would hopefully have been the first of many dates.<br/>3. He would've kept his damned mouth shut when his coworkers asked him about his type.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Radius in Curtain Seven

"How much do you love me?"

Danny pauses his attempts to decipher Dr. Ramirez-Cruz's instructions for the migraine in Curtain 4. He smiles at Xao, mostly teeth. "Not much."

Xao beams, undeterred. "That's about to change, boo-boo, because I have given you a _gift._ " Danny lifts an eyebrow, and Xao says, "In Curtain 7, a 12-year-old female—"

"Xao!" Danny shouts, scandalized.

"—possible distal radius fracture. And the _extremely_ anxious-looking father pacing and pulling his hair with lovely, long, _unberinged_ fingers looks factory direct from the Danny Mahealani Build-a-Boyfriend Workshop."

Danny holds out for exactly two seconds before he folds. "You're a terrible human being."

Xao grins. "Now we're square, right?"

Danny pats Xao's cheek as he leaves the nurses' area. "Oh, boo-boo," he says, "not even close."

Danny tries to live without regrets. He grabs new experiences, makes confident decisions, and views mistakes as opportunities for growth. He can't change the past, so he sees little point in agonizing over _what-ifs_.

If he _had_ a list of things he would do differently, it would only contain three things:

  1. He would've gotten involved in the Beacon Hills supernatural scene after Derek turned Jackson.
  2. He would've said " _Yes_ " the first time Stiles Stilinski asked if he was attractive to gay guys and asked him on what would hopefully have been the first of many dates.
  3. He would've kept his damned mouth shut when his coworkers asked him about his type.



He can't do anything about any of it now. Jackson's in England; Stiles is in Beacon Hills; and the other nurses, no matter how many times Danny begs them to stop, gleefully attempt to set him up with any guy who halfway fits the mold. He can't _wait_ to see what Xao thinks matches up this time.

Danny checks the chart for MAYHEW, HAILEY ERICA outside Curtain 7. Like Xao said, it's a 12-year-old female with a possible distal radius fracture sustained in—Danny winces—a parkour incident. He will _never_ understand children. He plasters on a smile and goes inside to greet his patient.

He gets a look at this guy who's supposedly perfect for him, and—

Damn. He owes Xao an apology fruit basket.

The anxious-looking guy with MAYHEW, HAILEY ERICA, far more than halfway fits the mold. He's the template from which the mold was made.

Danny's a _professional_ , damn it, and his practiced professional opening spiel sits on the tip of his tongue, but what comes out is a stunned and broken, " _Stiles_?"

The guy whirls around, and for a second, Danny thinks he's wrong, because no spark of recognition lights his eyes. But unless Stiles has a secret identical twin, it _has to_ be him. No one else has those warm-honey eyes combined with that upturned nose and pink lips.

Well, maybe Danny's not surprised that Stiles didn't recognize him. In high school Danny had been so _proud_ about his appearance, but the life of an emergency department nurse doesn't lend itself to that level of vanity.

Danny's hair is several weeks past due for a cut and a couple days past due for a wash. A week of extra shifts messing up his sleep schedule has left dark circles under his eyes. His scrubs are clean, but they were hauled out of the back of his dresser at 5 this morning, after having been squashed there for over a month. The scrubs are also pink with little yellow rubber duckies and liberally covered with dog hair.

Stiles looks _amazing_. He's tall now, maybe taller than Danny. His shoulders and chest are broad, and he's all over lithe muscle. He finally figured out a sweet spot for his hair, between the lamentable buzz cut and the out-of-control, over-gelled porcupine. He's grown into his face, which always looked sad and wise beyond its years, even before his mom died.

His wardrobe hasn't changed much. Blue and red flannel over a graphic T-shirt. Dark wash jeans. Black Chucks. There are only two concessions to his alleged adult status. First off, the clothes _fit_ —like Stiles is finally comfortable in himself and using layers because he likes them, not because he wants to hide his body from everyone's attention. Second, instead of some inappropriate and/or sexist slogan, Stiles' shirt says "JAMES LICK MIDDLE SCHOOL JUNIOR BAND" with an illustration of an oboe under it. Danny winces; Hailey will go home to one irate band director if her arm's in a cast.

More profound than the physical changes—though Danny appreciates those—is that Stiles looks _calm_. Stable.

Stiles' eyes light up, and a wide, shocked smile splits his face nearly in two. " _Danny_?" he says, and then, more certainly, " _Danny_!" Stiles sort of leaps forward, and _finally_ , after all these years, Danny gets to experience a Stilinski hug.

After Stiles let go of his hopeless and frankly creepy crush and she and Stiles became friends and allies in the war against the monster of the month, Lydia used to _rhapsodize_ about Stilinski hugs. She'd received them from both Stiles and the Sheriff and confirmed that they were the best hugs to be had in Beacon Hills. Allison backed her up on this. Even _Jackson_ , who'd taken out a restraining order against Stiles during the kanima catastrophe, had gotten a hug from Stiles before leaving for London, and he had grudgingly admitted that it wasn't half bad (which from Jackson was practically a love sonnet). But in all the years they'd known each other, Stiles had never hugged Danny.

The experience does not disappoint. Stiles hugs with his whole body—arms wound fiercely around Danny's torso, hands gripping his back, legs braced neatly around Danny's, face pressed into the crook of Danny's neck.

Danny sighs contentedly and tries to give as good as he's getting, even going so far as to run his fingers through the hair at the nape of Stiles' neck. He'd spent a lot of time in junior high and high school staring at the back of Stiles' head trying to decide his hair would feel like. Turns out it's thick but soft and surprisingly yielding under his fingers.

"Jesus, Danny," Stiles murmurs into his neck, fingers clenching tight into his scrubs, "we thought—" He pulls back enough to search Danny's face. "We thought a lot of things. Because we didn't _know_. One day you were just _gone_ , and we were never sure—"

Danny's eyes widen. "I told Lydia. We had to move back to Hawaii because my grandfather got sick." True as far as it goes—and as far as Danny's willing to go in this conversation. "Didn't she pass my message along?"

Stiles shakes his head, his own eyes widening. "That was in the middle of the whole—" He clears his throat. "I mean, she had a lot going on at the time."

"The dead pool," Danny says.

Stiles' eyes get even wider, and he stumbles back a step, though he doesn't let go completely. "You _knew_?" He groans. "Danny-boy," he says, and Danny winces. Stiles only used to use that nickname when he was upset with Danny. "We needed help in that mess."

Danny extracts himself from the hug. "I—I wanted to help, I did. I did as much as I could to kind of... drops clues for Lydia, without coming out and saying anything. But my parents were clear that we _weren't_ getting involved, and I could only do so much without them finding out."

Danny can tell that Stiles has a hell of a lot more questions—of course he does; he's Stiles—and Danny has a few of his own, like why Lydia didn't tell anyone about the Mahealanis moving after things settled down post-Benefactor. But a voice behind them huffs, "Hel _lo_? Dad, there's going to be a _ton_ of cute guys at the bars tonight. Could you, maybe, let the nice nurse deal with the kid with the _broken arm_ now?"

Danny staggers back from Stiles, face flushing with mortification. Right. His _job_.

Stiles rolls his eyes and turns around. "Yes, Your Highness," he snarks, but under the sass Danny hears so much love that it staggers him. He steps up behind Stiles ( _right_ behind Stiles, and he's not ashamed to admit it; the guy is warm and he smells great) and gets his first look at the kid.

He hasn't been _sure_ , until now, of Stiles' relationship to the patient. Xao said father, but that's a big assumption. This could've been his stepkid, or Scott's kid, or some random kid he felt responsibility toward.

But, Jesus. Give Stiles skin the color of Danny's, make his hair shoulder-length and wavy, shrink him a foot, and give him the outline of an adolescent girl on the cusp of puberty, and he would look exactly like the girl in front of them. She has to be his kid. Stiles puts a hand on her uninjured shoulder. No need to be a werewolf to sense the pride rolling off him as he says, "Hailey, this is Danny Mahealani. He and I knew each other back in the day. Danny, this is my daughter Hailey."

Danny tilts his head. "It's very nice to meet you, Hailey."

Hailey nods primly back. "It's nice to meet you, too, Danny." She searches his face and then shrugs. "I think Dad mentioned you once. Maybe," she says, bored, and, ouch, that hurts, that he was _that_ much of a nonentity to Stiles.

To his surprise, Stiles looks deeply regretful, almost distraught, as he tells her, "He disappeared our junior year of high school, during the dead pool. You remember us telling you about that?"

Danny's startled; he wouldn't have considered that appropriate information for a 12-year-old. But she _is_ a Stilinski; the rules of age-appropriate sharing might be different for her.

"When someone was trying to kill the supernatural people, right?"

Stiles nods. "Yeah, that's right. We'd never heard that Danny was supernatural, but he disappeared in the middle of it, and we... kind of had to assume the worst."

Danny swallows hard. It had never occurred to him that anyone would assume that. "Stiles—"

Stiles shakes his head. "Water under the bridge, Danny," he says softly, and when he looks up, he's smiling. "You're alive, and that's all that matters."

Danny smiles back. "So, what brings you to San Francisco?" he asks brightly as he sets about checking Hailey's vitals. That seems like maybe a safer topic than Beacon Hills.

"He's come to trawl the Castro," Hailey announces.

Danny chokes, and Stiles turns the darkest red Danny's seen on anyone not in the middle of a heart attack. "Her _mom_ ," Stiles gasps. "We're bringing her to her mom for the school year."

Hailey swoons dramatically, the back of her hand against her forehead. "But soft, now fadeth Summer's golden light/Back to my Wintry dungeon I take flight!"

Stiles pokes her in the ribs, causing her to laugh and flinch away. Danny side-eyes them as he readjusts the blood pressure cuff around her uninjured arm.

"Your mother is a very nice person," Stiles says sternly, "and her house is in no way dungeonesque." Danny recognizes the anxiety in his tone from when his parents separated, his mom _adamant_ that Danny and his sisters only speak well of their dad, as if afraid of being blamed for any bad opinions the kids had about him.

"She's _boring_!" Hailey wails. "Her house is boring. Her _life_ is boring. Her friends are ordinary humans." In this moment, Danny learns all he needs to know about why Stiles and Hailey's mom aren't together anymore. " _And_ ," Hailey continues, "her new boyfriend is a _major_ lame-o."

"Hey." Stiles' tone is sharp. "What did I say about that word?"

"Sorry, Dad," she says, chastened. "But he's awful. Wants to be my _friend_."

"The horror," Danny says dryly.

Stiles grins, while Hailey looks like they've betrayed her to the utmost degree. "Parents are parents," she informs him archly. " _Not_ friends."

Danny hums and goes back to Hailey's chart. "You did this _parkouring_?" he asks, to be sure.

Hailey nods excitedly. "Vern and Allie do this _sick_ flip—"

"Vern and Allie," Stiles says with brittle patience, "are half werewolf, half kitsune. _You_ are a tiny baby spark. Stop trying to keep up with them in stuff like this."

"But—"

" _No,_ " Stiles says in his best _because I'm your father, that's why_ voice. Hailey subsides, grumbling but subdued.

Conversation dwindles after that. Danny finishes Hailey's prep and sends her to X-ray to confirm whether the bone is broken.

Stiles looks at him as he leaves the area, like he wants to say something. Danny holds his breath, meets Stiles' gaze, and waits, but after a minute Stiles shakes his head and leaves the room without a word.

Danny returns to the nurses' station and avoids Xao's pointed looks. He's won't give the jerk the satisfaction. And he has some thinking to do.

For a while, Lydia had emailed Danny and Jackson periodic updates on conditions in Beacon Hills. They were infrequent, only the things she considered important enough to pass along.

_Stiles came out as bi today. In front of the entire junior class. I doubt he meant to be quite so loud about it._

_Finally got the Nemeton back to sleep. So much pain, and I'd do it all again to fix this bullshit. So glad Stiles is Scott's emissary and tied himself to the Nemeton, because I would happily go the rest of my life without looking at it again._

_Acceptance packet arrived today. I'm going to Cambridge._

After she'd graduated and moved to England for school—and Jackson—Lydia's Beacon Hills updates had stopped. It's been a few years since Danny's had contact with her beyond liking the occasional picture on Instagram. Danny isn't sure she talks to the old pack anymore, if she knows what's going on in their home town. That Stiles has a kid, that Scott and Kira have two, named after their dead friends. He wouldn't be surprised if Lydia had cut herself out of that life completely. If she has, he'll cheer her on.

Here's the thing. Danny's thought about Stiles since the Mahealanis left Beacon Hills. The romantic in him wonders what it would be like to take a chance with Stiles now that the guy's in front of him again.

The pragmatist in him is cautious. Stiles still lives in Beacon Hills, after all; Lydia intimated that it would be unwise for him to move away, or even travel for longer than one lunar cycle, because of the strong magic that ties him to the Nemeton. Danny loves his life in San Francisco and has _no_ interest in moving back to Hellmouth Junior. Stiles has a _kid_. Danny has literally no idea what to do with 12-year-old girls. He barely knows how to _talk_ to them; he certainly doesn't know how to be a friend to them and _definitely_ not a parent or parent-type figure.

There's also the fact that Danny has no idea who Stiles _is_ now, and Stiles has no idea who Danny is. The getting-to-know-you part of a relationship is always one of the coolest, but what if they get to know each other again and hate each other? What if the Stiles that Danny's been carrying a half-guttered torch for all these years stopped existing sometime after Danny left Beacon Hills? What if the "nice guy" Stiles always talked about when he talked about Danny doesn't exist anymore? What if he never existed? Danny never was quite as nice as everyone thought—and even when he was, it was never for the reasons anyone thought.

No, he decides, it's best to leave this fish in the pond. It was nice to see Stiles again, and to meet Hailey, but other than that, a relationship with Stiles is best left a "what-if" for boring shifts and sleepless nights. Danny tries to live without regrets, but he recognizes that sometimes they're essential to survival.

Hailey and Stiles come back an hour later. Fracture confirmed, Hailey sports a cast on her left arm. It's bright orange, which is apparently driving Stiles bonkers, given the number of times he's glared at it since they came back to the ER. Danny gives them the prescription for Hailey's pain meds and goes over cast care and follow-up instructions. He asks if he can be the first person to sign her cast, and she agrees. He draws a stick figure with wavy shoulder-length hair doing a backflip over a building. Hailey squeals with delight. Stiles looks unamused.

When it's time for them to leave, Danny and Stiles stand and look awkwardly at each other for a long, charged minute. This is the point where Danny could say "screw it" and ask Stiles out. He could take Stiles' hand and delicately write his phone number on the sensitive skin of Stiles' inner wrist to feel the pulse flutter there. Or Danny could just grab him and kiss him, in full view of his 12-year-old daughter, who would make appalled gagging sounds and claim she was scarred for life but would, Danny suspects, secretly be pleased for her father.

Instead, Danny shakes Stiles' hand, tells him, with great sincerity, how good it was to see him, and waves at Hailey as they walk out the door.

*

After they leave, Danny's cleaning out the room and finds a purple hoodie hanging over the back of the chair. At first he thinks it's Stiles', but when he picks it up, he realizes it's far too small. He turns to rush toward the waiting room, in the slim hopes that he can catch them before they leave, when the heavy exit door swings ponderously open and Hailey comes through, calling, "I left it in the room, Dad. Be right back!"

Danny grins and meets her in the hallway, holding out the hoodie. "Looking for this?"

Hailey walks up to him like a woman on a mission. She looks at him consideringly and makes no move toward the hoodie. Danny raises his eyebrows and waits. "Do you think my dad is cute?" Hailey demands.

Danny's pulse rockets. Fifteen years he's been away from Beacon Hills, but with one question, a girl who didn't know him there rockets him back. Back to being an uncertain gay teenager with far less confidence than anyone thought, and to a boy with a face like this girl's asking if he's attractive to gay guys.

"And don't lie," she continues, clearly misunderstanding his delay. "I may not be—" She looks around and lowers her voice. "—you-know-what, so I can't hear your heartbeat, but I've been around them long enough to learn other ways of telling when someone's lying."

Danny sighs and rubs his face. He could lie anyway. Or he could tell the truth but make it clear that what he feels about Stiles doesn't matter, because there's no way to mesh their lives together given their current circumstances.

Hailey rolls her eyes. "Oh my _god_ , why do adults do _everything_ the hard way?" She huffs and stares at him. "Danny. I'm not asking you to _marry_ my dad. I'm just asking if you think he's cute."

"Yeah," Danny says, "I really do." He thinks Hailey already knows that.

"Excellent," she says, finally taking her hoodie back. Was she going to leave it here if he'd said no? She shoves a piece of paper into his hand. "This is his number, and the name of the hotel where we're staying. Call him. Tomorrow. Today he's going to fuss over me like the overprotective Papa Swan he is. Tomorrow I'll go to Mom's place, and he'll be restless and make bad decisions. Call him, offer to show him around. He'll like that. You can dance. Make out or something."

Danny stares in awe at this kid, who's only known him for a couple hours but has decided that he's okay enough to "make out or something" with her father. "What makes you think he wants that?" he asks, because of course he has to look every gift horse right in its damned mouth.

Hailey's face twists. "Because he's never talked about you."

Danny's eyes pop wide. "How does that—"

"He's my _dad_ ," Hailey says, rolling her eyes. "You know how much he talks. He talks about everyone. Everything. I can name half the kids in his graduating class, because he has stories about so many of them. People who moved away. People who died. People he only saw in the halls between classes.

" _Obviously_ I lied when I said he only mentioned you once. But he didn't _talk_ about you. He would start to say something about you and then just stop and look away. I'm no expert on adult stuff—" Danny snorts, and Hailey grins approvingly. "—but I think that means that he was too upset about you disappearing." She shrugs. "Or maybe he didn't talk about you because you were a giant jerk and he was glad you were gone. But he doesn't hug giant jerks like that. "

Danny nods, dazed. He has literally no words to reply to that cascade of near-logic.

"So, you gonna call?" she asks, and there's so much hope in her voice that Danny can't help but feel hopeful, too.

Maybe it won't lead anywhere. Maybe it will. Either way, it'll be fun for a night, and he'll be able to say that he grabbed the chance when he had it. Cross something off of his regret list.

He smiles at Hailey and tucks Stiles' number into his pocket. "Yeah," he says. "I think I will."

**Author's Note:**

> you never know what you might find at my [tumblr](http://hugealienpie.tumblr.com/)


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